Advice to anyone who doesn't want to get sucked into playing FFXIV: "YouTube is not your friend!" I'm trying hard to avoid going down the MMO rabbit hole again, but some of those videos are amazing. They say nothing of gameplay, just lots of pretty pictures... so I'll keep tuning into this thread for more substantial news. If I play, it will be on the PS3, so I have some time to decide. I just wish it was coming to the 360 - you know, IF I absolutely cannot avoid getting the game.

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Mytocles (MY-toe-cleez)

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most!"- I don't remember who said it, and probably neither do they...

Game should be out today. I think the article that was linked was pretty extreme. It seemed very sensationalist to me and probably isn't the best article to fully judge the game on. I played the beta quite a bit before release and while there's quite a few negatives about it, there's also quite a lot that was good too. Give me a little bit (probably later tonight after I get the family fed ) and I'll post up my thoughts on the beta.

Game should be out today. I think the article that was linked was pretty extreme. It seemed very sensationalist to me and probably isn't the best article to fully judge the game on. I played the beta quite a bit before release and while there's quite a few negatives about it, there's also quite a lot that was good too. Give me a little bit (probably later tonight after I get the family fed ) and I'll post up my thoughts on the beta.

Well the review sums uip exactly what is wrong with the game, not sure how you can sensationalize some fo those points, they either are or aren't. Definitely put me off.

I'll clarify that with a quick summary of my JRPG background. The first one I ever tried to play was a PC port of one of the Metal Gear Solid games; don't recall which one. My fuzzy memory of it was that 90% of the gameplay consisted of hitting the space bar over and over to advance through interminably long dialogue cutscenes.

Metal Gear Solid is a JRPG? Huh, who knew...

As someone who generally dislikes MMOs but adores Final Fantasy, I'm have to admit I'm pretty intrigued by FFXIV. The fact that it has more of a single player, console-ish focus is actually a huge positive for me. I don't want to interact with other players unless I absolutely have to, so things like screwy chat interfaces don't bother me in the least. Hell, I played Guild Wars for a month, loved it, and only used the chat feature on a couple occasions. I actually prefer old-school turn-based combat, so that's not a deal breaker at all. And since I just did a major PC upgrade, I'd love to run something that looks purty. Might pick it up on my way home and give it a spin.

While it sounds like Squeenix completely missed the target with the hardcore MMO crowd, they might be able to reel in some of the non-MMO, console JRPG fans like myself.

I'll clarify that with a quick summary of my JRPG background. The first one I ever tried to play was a PC port of one of the Metal Gear Solid games; don't recall which one. My fuzzy memory of it was that 90% of the gameplay consisted of hitting the space bar over and over to advance through interminably long dialogue cutscenes.

While it sounds like Squeenix completely missed the target with the hardcore MMO crowd, they might be able to reel in some of the non-MMO, console JRPG fans like myself.

The problem is they missed the target with the hardcore MMO crowd (including a lot of FF11 players) and completely missed the casual crowd (the EQ2, WoW crowd) and refused to implement just about any of the advances new MMOs have made in the past 5 years. This is a game designed for Japanese PS3 players and everyone else can like it or go away. Very stupid strategy for the long term.

Gratch, you do realize that FFXI absolutely utterly and totally REQUIRED a group past level 10, right? The game wasn't anything even remotely close to casual. And I haven't heard anything that they changed it in FFXIV.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

I'll clarify that with a quick summary of my JRPG background. The first one I ever tried to play was a PC port of one of the Metal Gear Solid games; don't recall which one. My fuzzy memory of it was that 90% of the gameplay consisted of hitting the space bar over and over to advance through interminably long dialogue cutscenes.

Metal Gear Solid is a JRPG? Huh, who knew...

Yeah, probably doesn't fit the RPG definition but I wasn't sure as after my first hour of gameplay consisted of 45 minutes of clicking through dialogue I gave up on it

In any case, I am curious for the reactions from those taking the plunge. There is some elusive element required for enjoyment of jrpgs it seems, an element that I acknowledge but am am utterly unable to comprehend so I'm looking forward to seeing how the "faithful" react to the game.

Gratch, you do realize that FFXI absolutely utterly and totally REQUIRED a group past level 10, right? The game wasn't anything even remotely close to casual. And I haven't heard anything that they changed it in FFXIV.

I've heard that, but have also read a few articles that this is one is much more solo friendly. We'll see.

I've got a buddy of mine that's a bit more MMO savvy than I am who wants to play, so we'll give it a shot and see what happens. Besides, I've played every FF game (even gave XI a shot for a couple weeks), so I'm pretty much required to at least give this a look. Who knows, maybe without any sort of MMO-rose-colored glasses on, I can actually enjoy it. For the record, I'm not really expecting to like it (it still is an MMO, after all), but do want to at least give it a fair shake.

I played beta about 1 week before release so some of what I saw may be different. I'll list out what I felt were the pros and cons of it.

Pros:

Graphics / setting. The world is beautiful. The characters and animations looked great as well.

Sound. The music was amazing. Nobuo Uematsu returned to do the soundtrack and it is incredible. I'm pretty sure I'll pick up the soundtrack to the game at the very least.

Story. The game has a full story in it, although in beta they apparently cut it off. When I created a character you get a full introductory quest that's different for each starting area. It was nice seeing the character I created in the cutscenes. There's full voice for all the cutscenes where story quests are involved. I read that the story quest lines are available every 10 levels.

Character system? Wasn't sure what to label this. Leveling your character is very open ended. You can change classes simply by changing out your weapon. You can carry abilities you've gained from one class over to the others as you switch to them. Effectively you could create any kind of character as you leveled up. You can only assign so many abilities to your hot bar, so you have to pick and choose what abilities to use. I was probably the most impressed with this aspect of the game.

Guildleves These are like hunts from FF12. Or like dailies from WoW. Your allowed 8 of these in a 36 hour period (was 48 I hear they lowered it on release). It seems like these are the main quests you do in between the story quests. A group can share these so you can effectively do more than 8. You can also link them together to form a campaign quest of sorts (although I didn't get to see this in beta).

Solofriendly This one is definitely far more solo friendly than FF11. The guildleve quests you have have difficulty levels that you can assign depending on the size of your group. So if your solo you can set them so they are easily soloable. You can also group with up to 15 people if you prefer and scale the difficulty up for better rewards.

Cons:

Lack of content. I was able to finish the story quests rather quickly and after that you don't get another for 10 levels (I leveled to 10 really quick in beta tho). The main thing to level up on appears to be Guildleves and grinding. If your looking for tons of quest hubs like in WoW or pretty much any new MMO out there, this doesn't appear to have them. It appears they mean for you to do Guildleves between story content. But they limit how many you can do in a 36 hour period. Square did claim to have a lot of quest content left out of the beta, so maybe there's more in release.

User Interface. The UI is a lot like 11's Which is bad. It is really designed around console users , but this was a HUGE misstep in my opinion since they are releasing this on PC a full 7 months or so before the consoles. The UI is basically all done through a menu on the side of the screen. If you want to pull up your inventory, there's no short cut. You open the menu, scroll down to inventory and pull it up. If you like JRPG menu systems you'll be right at home, but if you want a more streamlined system you'll hate this. This is probably the biggest area where I felt they dropped the ball.

It's not easy. Not sure what to call this category, but there's basically no “hand holding” here. Your dropped in a huge world with complex systems and very little information. Quest givers do not have handy ! marks over there heads you have to figure out which NPC's are the quest givers (it's not too difficult tho). Another example on the difficulties of the system. I wanted to buy another weapon for switching classes, I pulled up the map, there was no easy identifiable weapon shop. I had to aimlessly wander looking for the shop. Another example I wanted to try out crafting, so I went looking for crafting items. There are several crafting guilds, I went to them but they wouldn't sell me the items. I gave up trying. There's lots of little things that aren't explained, and many that are, but the explanations are buried in menus. I don't mind figuring things out but some of this will definitely put off more casual players.

In summary I think it has a lot of potential. I think they made some steps forward in the genre with the multi-class systems and guild systems (you can be in more than 1 guild at the same time). But they also made several steps back with a clunky UI and a very non-user friendly game. It's not nearly as terrible as some people are making it out to be, but I'm not sure it's awesome enough to pull a lot of people in either. I'm torn though, I had enough fun with it in beta that I'm tempted...

The way they bill seems pretty bush-league. $10/month for access, then $3/character. I don't have any basis of comparison...is this something other MMO's do as well?

No, I don't know of any other mainstream MMO that charges like that with the exception of Eve (which comes out to $15 for either two or three characters). The other big ones (WoW, EQ2, Conan, etc) have a flat fee.

FFXI and FFXIV were always odd when it came to billing - they both charge you extra money monthly if you have more than one (or is it two?) characters. Every other MMO is the usual $14.99 a month fee.

And EVE Online is all about the one character you work on anyway. If memory serves, you can only skill up (level) one character on the account at a time. You can play them whenever you want, but only one is actually leveling up.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

Spent a few hours with it over the last couple days, and am frustrated beyond belief. I think there might be a good game in here somewhere, but good luck figuring out how to play it. FFXIV seems to delight in providing as little information as possible and letting the player figure everything out on their own. Even things you would think should be very basic are completely baffling. For example, you're supposed to be able to change classes by buying weapons, but I spent over an hour last night looking for information on where to either buy or craft a new weapon and came up empty. Quests tell you to return to the questgiver to turn them in, but talking to the questgiver provides no indication of how to actually do so. Main story quests are supposedly marked on the map, but since you can't scroll the map at all (it's centered on a radius right around the player), there's no way to find them without wandering around aimlessly. I wanted to look into crafting some items, and after over an hour of searching I couldn't find any indication of how to go about doing it. Oh, and asking any sort of question in-game about the mechanics either gets you complete silence or "STFU noob" responses. Awesome.

For the record, I have no problem with complex gaming systems. However, when they are accompanied by absolutely zero explanation on how to use them, then it's simply just stupid. Frankly, I'd love to be able to play for a couple hours with someone who understands what the fuck is going on, as I might be able to enjoy it if I could even get a handle on the very basics. I'm sure I could probably figure it out if I had a shitton of time to devote to doing online research and trial & error, but spending what little gaming time I have wandering around lost for hours and hours doesn't really appeal to me much. i knew FFXIV wasn't geared towards the casual gamer, but the extreme they took it to is pretty ridiculous.

If you go to the camps and click on the crystal (Aetheryte Crystal? think I may have mispelled that ) there is an option to read a manual essentially that will tell you lots of stuff about the game. Those crystals exist in the main cities too. I had the same trouble with the weapons though. It took forever to find the weapon shop that sold all the basic weapons. It was on the map, but not called anything that makes it identifiable AS a weapon shop.

But the game is very unforgiving to new players with little to no explanation about anything, which is sad because I think there's probably a decent game here but many new players will be so turned off they'll give up. Hopefully SE can clean things up.

Was able to spend a couple hours last night playing with a group, and actually had quite a bit of fun. The biggest difference came when I switched to a gamepad instead of the keyboard. It's painfully obvious that this is designed with consoles in mind, as using a controller felt far more natural. Interfaces that were frustrating using a keyboard and mouse (i.e. using the menu system, camera controls, etc.) were far more fluid when using a controller. Sounds crazy and is tough to put my finger on, but there really was a night and day difference.

Once we finally got past the initial frustration of figuring out how to create a party, teleport between locations, activate levequests at the crystals, and a few other things, we really had a blast. The only real gripe I have is that the targeting system is incredibly wonky and difficult. Playing as a melee fighter, I found myself accidentally targeting either myself or my other party members instead of the mobs. Part of this is just practice, I'm sure, but it certainly takes some getting used to. The entire thing feels very much like a "Final Fantasy" game, with a beautiful world, cool quests, and an interesting main storyline...and I expect that most PC MMO'ers will hate it for exactly that reason. This is obviously a console JRPG at heart, and anyone expecting anything different will likely be turned off right away.

The goal tonight is to figure out how to craft and change classes. The only other weapons we could find in the starting town were lances and bows, but neither of those classes appeal to me much. I'd love to make a battle mage-type character, with a few spells to go along with my sword skills. I'm actually surprised at how much I enjoyed it after I figured a few things out, and am very much looking forward to spending more time in this world.

The entire thing feels very much like a "Final Fantasy" game, with a beautiful world, cool quests, and an interesting main storyline...and I expect that most PC MMO'ers will hate it for exactly that reason. This is obviously a console JRPG at heart, and anyone expecting anything different will likely be turned off right away.

I love Final Fantasy and console JRPGs yet I'm still staying away from this game. I guess it's mostly because I'm too critical of MMOs having played most of them. I would have loved to see this game do well but I had to cancel my preorder after reading most reviews/impressions.

Why pay $15 a month for a console JRPG when you could just play FF12? Loved the MMO style combat in 12.

I love Final Fantasy and console JRPGs yet I'm still staying away from this game. I guess it's mostly because I'm too critical of MMOs having played most of them. I would have loved to see this game do well but I had to cancel my preorder after reading most reviews/impressions.

I'm sure that the fact I don't really have an MMO base of comparison is helping me to enjoy this more than most people would. That said, I don't see FF XIV having a ton of longevity for me. Mainly because I really only have a few hours a week (if that) which I can spend on it.

Quote from: skystride on October 08, 2010, 05:10:08 PM

Why pay $15 a month for a console JRPG when you could just play FF12? Loved the MMO style combat in 12.

I figure that between FFXII (twice), and all the FF Tactics games, I've spent well over 300 hours in ivalice. As much as I love it, replaying those titles doesn't hold much appeal...was looking for something new.

Square Enix's laborious online role-playing game is a step backward for the genre.

The Good: * Impressive visual engine * Flexible class system lets you be what you want, when you want.

The Bad: * Absolutely miserable interface * Does a poor job of communicating important information * Limited questing means you're always looking for something fun to do * Everything about the economy stinks * Every aspect of the game is filled with dumb obstacles.

When the simple act of creating an account for the massively multiplayer online game you just bought is a convoluted mess, you know you're in trouble. It's unfortunate that the first impression you have of Final Fantasy XIV is so indicative of the experience at large. It's hard to miss these gaffes--the bizarre and unfriendly method of getting an account set up, the troublesome patcher, having to exit the game if you want to adjust the graphics settings, and so on.

These might have been forgivable flaws had developer Square Enix provided an excellent reason to overcome these obstacles, but in fact, they set the stage for a misguided effort that uses its atrocious interface and tortuous mechanisms to veil its core simplicity and unending repetition. The brighter aspects speak to the MMOG that might have been. A robust graphics engine gives your travels some razzle-dazzle, an open-ended class system offers welcome flexibility, and a focus on storytelling makes the initial hours more bearable than they may have been otherwise. But these minor peaks are outweighed by abyssal valleys of aimlessness and unfriendliness. Final Fantasy XIV isn't fun; it's work.

Yeesh.

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"All opinions posted are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled."

After another 3 hours last night - which included multiple deaths due to nothing more than the crappy targeting system, complete bewilderment on how the crafting system works, spending 20 minutes simply running to a checkpoint, and many other frustrations - and I'm starting to agree with these reviews. Mainly that there are certainly some really good ideas in FXIV, but the overall experience is so ridiculously cumbersome, unintuitive, and clunky that it's it's not worth looking for them. So many aspects of the game are completely broken that I'm very surprised it was released as-is. Doubt I'll be playing much past the free month, if I even make it that long. That said, I'll certainly be interested in looking at it a few months from now. If some of the issues are are ironed out (and the game survives long enough), I really do think there's some fun to be had.

i looked to see what Gamespot gave Final Fantasy 11 back in Nov 2003,and then compare,as i always thought me and a few others were in the minority of liking that game(FF11)...but they gave FF11- 8.2(which is a respectable score),so that can't be good for FF14 if some people thought FF11 was bad

would Square Enix release patches to fix the 'bad decisions' do you think? or will they stick to their guns?

would Square Enix release patches to fix the 'bad decisions' do you think? or will they stick to their guns?

They'll have to if they want it to survive. I think that some of the most glaring issues can probably be patched in or out pretty easily (i.e. levequest limits, the seemingly random crafting system, fast travel, some additional tutorials, etc.). That's why I would actually hold out a small glimmer of hope for FFXIV. If Squeenix listens to the players and changes a few - okay, a lot - of things, there's a fun game underneath.

This is by far the most fatal flaw of the game. If it feels like everything you do is work, why would you want to even try to play it. Considering the expense behind developing and running an mmo, I have a feeling this game is going to do serious financial damage to Squeenix overall and the FF brand in particular. We may be witnessing the end of an era.

The PS3 version isn't arriving until March, 2011 and there is no way I can (or would want to) play on PC, so I have even more time to make up my mind.

I remember my first visit to FFXI, and for me it was as confusing as everyone is saying FFXIV is - and I played for almost 2 years. If this gets improved by a reasonable amount, I may be IN! I will never, ever, ever(!) again lead a clan however - talk about turning fun into work, ugh!

The same place I read about the Mar '11 release (here) also said the price point will be $12.99, which is cheaper than FFXI was. I'm pretty sure that fee was $14.99 USD - plus a dollar for each extra character. With four characters, that was roughly 20 bucks a month, which I thought was fine because I (literally) played day and night and played no other games for that whole time. The $12.99 figure would therefore save me a decent amount of money; if I stay strong with only having one character. If I read it correctly, the extra character fee for XIV would be $3 each, which will help me hold to the one character limit... or two...

Lookitme, I'm already rationalizing the price...

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Mytocles (MY-toe-cleez)

"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most!"- I don't remember who said it, and probably neither do they...

The same place I read about the Mar '11 release (here) also said the price point will be $12.99, which is cheaper than FFXI was. I'm pretty sure that fee was $14.99 USD - plus a dollar for each extra character. With four characters, that was roughly 20 bucks a month, which I thought was fine because I (literally) played day and night and played no other games for that whole time. The $12.99 figure would therefore save me a decent amount of money; if I stay strong with only having one character. If I read it correctly, the extra character fee for XIV would be $3 each, which will help me hold to the one character limit... or two...

PC version is $9.99 + $3/character.

I canceled my account this morning...too much work and not enough fun. Will maybe revisit in a few months.

that is quite a good list..as in pretty much everything on that list is what people were complaining about(user interface and Map etc)...maybe it coming so late onto the PS3 wont be too bad afterall for those waiting,by March it could be the game we all wanted